


A Place You Could Walk Across (With Five Steps Now)

by prouvairablehulk



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/F, M/M, The Buzzfeed Unsolved AU, Thomas James and John are ghosts, Transcript Format, work with me here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 02:36:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairablehulk/pseuds/prouvairablehulk
Summary: VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: UNSOLVED S2 E5 - THE PIRATES OF OGLETHORPE PLANTATION[The camera (operated, as always, by ANNE BONNY) is pointed out the windscreen of a car, driving down what seems to be a long driveway lined with trees. A man (JACK RACKHAM) is driving, his messy dark hair the only thing clearly visible. In the passenger seat is a young woman (MAX BONNY), short, holding a cup of coffee the size of her forearm. Midnight City is playing through the car speakers.]





	A Place You Could Walk Across (With Five Steps Now)

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: UNSOLVED S2 E5 - THE PIRATES OF OGLETHORPE PLANTATION

[The camera (operated, as always, by ANNE BONNY) is pointed out the windscreen of a car, driving down what seems to be a long driveway lined with trees. A man (JACK RACKHAM) is driving, his messy dark hair the only thing clearly visible. In the passenger seat is a young woman (MAX BONNY), short, holding a cup of coffee the size of her forearm. Midnight City is playing through the car speakers.]

Jack: I hate this already. This is the opening of a horror film. 

Max: Don’t be a fucking wuss. You don’t even believe that we’ll find any evidence of ghosts. 

Jack, defensively: We’re driving to a haunted plantation that currently operates as a B&B, with a camera, intending to spend the night. There are so many found-footage horror films that start like this. Most of which involve psychopathic humans, not ghosts. 

[Max says nothing, but her body language suggests she’s rolling her eyes.]

Jack: Can’t you pretend to at least be a little bit scared?

Max: No. Fuck you. We’re here.

[They’ve pulled up outside a beautiful colonial style farmhouse with painted shutters and flowers in window boxes. In a lovely landscaped bed not far from the entrance is a sign that reads ‘Silver’s’. There’s a gorgeous black woman, probably in her fifties, leaning against the porch railing.]

Jack: If we die, I’m blaming you.

Anne, from behind the camera: Shut the fuck up, Jack. 

CUT TO BLACK

TITLE SEQUENCE

[Max and Jack are now sitting in front of an unlit fireplace in two very comfortable wingback armchairs. Max is wearing an utterly beautiful dress/denim jacket/docs combo and her eyeliner could kill a man. She looks unfazed. Jack is a hot mess in a brocade coat and somehow makes it looks amazing. He looks somewhere between delighted and scared shitless. It works for him. They’re cheating at life. We the transcribers are not sure how.]

Max: Today we will be investigating the haunting of the Oglethorpe Plantation as part of our ongoing investigation into the question: are ghosts real?

[Cut to Jack, shaking his head]

Max: Today’s site has some of the most detailed haunting reports in the country, so we might see something that even Jack can’t deny.

Jack: Which would make you very happy, wouldn’t it.

Max: We wouldn’t even be doing this if you just admitted ghosts exist. 

Jack: They don’t, though.

Max: Fuck you, Jack. 

Jack: I know, fuck me. 

Max: That being said, let’s get into it. 

[We cut away from Max and Jack to a black screen. The following monologue is accompanied by timeline graphics.]

Max: The Oglethorpe Plantation was founded in 1712, with the goal of being a place in which the wayward sons of the discerning aristocracy could be reformed. 

[We cut temporarily to scrolling text. Jack’s speech is in purple on the left. Max’s is in yellow on the right.]

Jack: What? 

Max: Yeah, they shipped off troublesome aristocrats to farm sugarcane and make money. 

Jack: As indentured servants?

Max: Well, they were never allowed to leave. 

Jack: So they were slaves. 

Max: Pretty much.

Jack: *wheeze* So, what, they just casually sold their children into slavery if they did something wrong?

Max: Yeah. 

Jack: That is - not funny at all. Keep going?

[Back to the timeline graphic]

Max: The Plantation was used primarily by a small circle of London families, and many of the residents faded into obscurity. Two, however, would never leave. In 1713, Thomas Hamilton, son of the Earl of Ashburne, arrived at the plantation after spending eight years in Bethlem Royal Hospital in London. He remained at the Plantation until the rebellion that ended Oglethorpe’s enterprise in 1716, and after that there are no official records. There are a limited number of records that survived the fire regarding Hamilton’s incarceration. Stories from oral histories recorded in the 1850s give a variety of conflicting accounts: that Thomas Hamilton was the lover of notorious pirate Captain Flint, and that the rebellion was orchestrated by the Captain in order to free him and that they sailed away, never to be heard of again; that Flint was temporarily incarcerated alongside Hamilton, and that the rebellion was jointly created, and that they settled down to cultivate the land afterwards; and that Flint allied with Charles Vane to destroy the plantation. 

[Back to the scrolling text]

Jack: Hold up, didn’t Charles Vane die in 1715?

Max: He did.

Jack: So that one has to be false. 

Max: It could be that Vane’s death was staged.

Jack: Bullshit. 

Max: It’s possible, with the right bribes. Additionally, it could have been Vane’s ghost. 

Jack: Or it could have all been made up. 

[Max clears her throat, and we go back to the timeline]

Max: The plantation was finally rebuilt in the early Nineteenth Century by the Ashe family, and nothing of supernatural note occurred until 1847, when 20 year old Natasha Ashe and 16 year old Maria Ashe reported seeing the figure of a tall man with blond hair who was definitely not a resident of the plantation drinking wine on the porch of the house at sunset for three days running. When they finally approached him, he vanished from before their eyes. The family commissioned the oral local histories as a means of identifying their ghost, and the stories led back to Thomas Hamilton and his pirate lover. 

[We cut back to Max and Jack in their armchairs. Jack has a hand over his eyes.]

Jack: They saw a full-body apparition of a gay pirate. You brought us here for gay pirates. 

Max, with barely constrained glee: Gay Pirates, Jack!

Jack: Tell me what else the gay pirates did.

Max: Leading up to the Civil War, the residents of the house reported seeing the ghost of Thomas Hamilton on the porch at least once a month. Copies of classical texts would remove themselves from the bookshelves and open themselves on side tables. The staff reported hearing a man singing sea shanties in the kitchen. After the Civil War, the plantation house stood abandoned for an extended period of time. In 1876, the local chapter of the KKK attempted to hold a rally at the site of the then-derelict house, and were driven off with thrown bricks that seemed to dislodge themselves from the wall before flying towards the members. 

Jack: Flying bricks.

Max: Right out of the side of the house. 

[Jack looks straight into the camera, all “sure”.]

Max: During the Depression, drifters said the house was always warm despite there never being any visible source of heat, and that water would boil if you put it in the kettle and on the stove, but police spoke of loud noises, flying objects, and slamming doors. 

Jack: So we’ve got two bleeding heart gay pirate ghosts who defended the poor and violently assaulted the racist?

Max: That’s certainly what it seems to be. But since we arrived, we’ve got two more stories. 

[The scene cuts again, and now we are in a lovely open farmhouse kitchen, Max propping her hip on the island with her hands wrapped around a mug while the gorgeous woman from before keeps watch on something in a kitchenaid mixer. A caption tells us that this is Madi Barlow, the owner of the B&B]

Madi: I inherited this place from my dearest friend, John Silver, and he bought it for the sentimental value. This was a state boys home between 1953 and 1979, and he spent much of his childhood here. John was - he was particularly camp, and he was from New Zealand with the accent to prove it, which you can imagine went down rather poorly.

[During this speech, an info caption pops up telling us that Madi is referring to AIDS activist and legendary drag performer Long John Silver, who died in 1998.]

Max: No kidding.

Madi: He was bullied relentlessly, but it was mostly verbal, and never went too far - things would fall off the walls, he said, or doors would slam. Just enough of an event to break things up. When he was thirteen, however, one of the boys attempted to beat him up. I say attempted, because when he tried to hit John, he was thrown bodily across the room. 

Max: You’re joking. 

Madi: Not even a little. He was so fond of telling that story. He said that there were ghosts in the house that protected him - the presence that threw the bully across the room and made things fall to disrupt events he called James, and he said there was another presence who helped him with schoolwork or recited old epics to him until he fell asleep, and he called that ghost Thomas. He always called them his guardian angels. They’re why he bought this place. 

Max: and you said you’d met James and Thomas?

Madi: John came back here when he knew he was dying. I came with him, mostly because I refused to leave him, and when we arrived here, when I opened the door and helped him inside, I could just feel someone there. I was worried at first - ghosts are fickle things, and I was worried they might not remember John, or might think I was responsible for his current illness. John started grinning as soon as I felt it, and he called out for James and Thomas, and I saw them. 

Max: No fucking way.

Madi: Thomas was a tall man, six foot if I had to guess, with cropped blond hair and blue eyes, and James was shorter than him, with green eyes and long red hair - longer than John liked to wear his, past his shoulders. They looked - they were pleased to see John, but they were sad to see him like he was, I think. I swear Thomas tried to hug him. And they helped me look after him - the water stayed hot long after the water heater should have run dry, the pills John needed were always at hand, food stayed warm - they cared for him. I still feel them sometimes, but it’s been much less since John died. Some of the guests tell me they saw Thomas on the back porch with wine, only ever at sunset. 

[We cut back to Max and Jack on the armchairs]

Jack: This is insane. I am going to be horribly disappointed if we don’t see anything, given how vivid these descriptions are. 

[Max grins. We cut to an external shot of the porch, the sun beginning to set. Max and Jack have pulled up some chairs, and are setting up secondary cameras and putting the spirit box on the table with a bottle of red. While this is happening, Max can be heard as a voice over.]

Max: Given that there are so many reports of seeing Thomas Hamilton’s ghost here on the back porch at sunset, this is where we are going to start. Madi is going to be joining us for this part of the night, while we attempt to experience it for ourselves. 

[Max and Madi have a glass of wine each on the table in front of them. Jack is slouched back in his chair.]

Jack: So we’re just going to wait and see what happens?

Max: That is precisely what we’re going to do. 

Jack: Yeah, no, we can do better than that.

Max: Jack -

Jack: Is there anyone here?

Max: Holy fuck, Jack, do you want to get possessed?

Jack: Any ghosts around tonight? Any gay pirates who want to join us for a glass of wine?

[There’s silence. Madi takes a sip of her wine. Max is glaring at Jack.]

Jack: Or are you too scared to manifest? Are you shy ghosts? Or are you just afraid of us? Are you scared ghosts? Coward ghosts?

Male Voice, Offscreen: Excuse me? What kind of thing is that to say to someone to whom you have yet to be formally introduced?

[Jack is screaming. Max yelps. Jack looks absolutely fucking terrified, Max just looks like she wasn’t expecting this. Madi takes another sip of wine, unfazed.]

Madi: Hello, Thomas. 

[The camera swings around, and for the first time in the series, we see a ghost. Thomas Hamilton looks exactly as he’d been described - a six foot man, muscled from years of physical labor, with clever blue eyes and cropped blond hair. He still wears the clothes of a 18th Century farmer, and he’s got one arm folded across his chest while the other holds a pewter cup, presumably containing wine.There’s a sort of fuzziness to him, like a slightly out of focus home movie.]

Thomas: Hello, Madi. It has been a while. How are you?

Madi: I’m well, thank you. 

Thomas: And your wife?

Madi: Scaring the hell out of Republicans in Congress and making the Orange Abomination uncomfortable. 

[Another info caption - Madi’s wife is Georgia Congresswoman Miranda Barlow, a far-left Democrat.] 

Thomas: Very good. Would you introduce me to our guests? And please, stop screaming, I’m not going to hurt you. 

[Jack finally stops screaming. He’s curled up into a ball in his wicker chair, eyes huge. Max, on the other hand, is leaning all the way over the table towards Thomas.]

Madi: Thomas, let me introduce Max Bonny and Jack Rackham. They are paranormal investigators. Behind the camera is Anne, Max’s wife. Max, Jack, Anne, Lord Thomas Hamilton, the rightful sixth Earl of Ashburne. 

Thomas: Charmed, I’m sure. 

Max: It’s certainly an honor. 

[Thomas beams at her, and then leans towards Madi.]

Thomas, in a conspiratorial stage whisper: I like her. 

[Max laughs.]

Max: You’ve just proved my entire belief system is right and Jack is woefully wrong. You’re close to my favorite being on this plane. 

Thomas: Quite the honor, that. 

Max: Is there any chance we could speak to any other ghosts on the property at the same time as you? It would be of great benefit. 

Thomas: It will take some persuading to get James to manifest - he isn’t much fond of it. But -

[Thomas is interrupted by a loud burst of static from the spirit box, which has turned itself on. It seems to operate normally for a brief moment, before settling down to play “Miss Me Blind” by Boy George and the Culture Club at a deafening volume, turning down after a few measures. Madi’s hands fly to her mouth.]

Thomas, almost apologetically, to Madi: This is why we haven’t been around much. (To the spirit box) Stop being such a drama queen. 

[The spirit box goes up in volume for another few seconds.]

Thomas, again to the box: I know that was literally your profession. But either manifest or go convince James to.

Madi, very softly: John?

[The spirit box pulses in volume.]

Thomas: You need more emotion to help you manifest? Well then - let’s see - they’ve defunded research again, and they’re attempting to remove legal protections.

[There’s a flicker in the air next to Thomas.]

Thomas: We’re getting somewhere! The Vice President supports conversion therapy! Religious Freedom Laws! Ronald Reagan!

[Thomas is grinning. So is Madi. Next to Thomas, another man appears. He’s much shorter than Thomas, maybe five foot nine, with curly dark hair that falls past his shoulders and blue eyes. There’s a shit-eating grin on his face, and he’s wearing leather pants and an unbuttoned dress shirt over a ‘Silence Equals Death’ t-shirt. Thomas wraps an arm around his shoulders.]

Madi: John. (Her voice breaks in the middle of his name.)

John: Hey, Mads. Sorry it took me so long - learning to do this is fucking hard. 

Madi, starting to cry: It’s worth the wait to see you. Oh, Johnny. 

John: Dear Christ, don’t cry, darling, please don’t cry. You promised you wouldn’t, remember? It was my last wish - my last words, too. 

Madi: No it wasn’t. Your last words were “I guess Oscar was right - I am going to go before that terrible wallpaper.”

[Jack and Max both laugh at that, earning another bright grin from John.]

John, almost teasing: It was still my last wish, Madi-dear. 

From off-screen: You’re still a little shit, you know that, right?

[The camera swings around, quickly. “Leaning” against the door leading back into the house is another ghost, this one a man with long red hair tied into a tail at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, in a white shirt open at the throat and a wide studded belt, a knee-length leather jacket accentuating his broad shoulders. He’s covered in freckles and his eyes are bright, piercing green. It’s James Flint.]

John, chipperly: Yes, I know. You love it.

[Flint rolls his eyes.]

John: You do.

Flint: I suppose I do. 

[John beams, and blinks out of existence momentarily, only to reappear in front of Flint, pushing on to his toes to kiss him.]

Madi: Only you, Johnny. 

John: What’s that supposed to mean?

Madi: Only you could find a loving and stable relationship even after you died. 

Thomas: Loving, yes, stable? Almost certainly not. 

Flint: We’re ghosts. Nothing about us is stable. 

John: Stop scaring them! (To Madi, Max, and Jack) They’re making it sound like we might suddenly start trying to kill you, and that’s a lie. We’re just fine, we’re not going anywhere. 

Max, curiously: Do you know if there are others like you - non-aggressive, self-aware ghosts?

Flint: Charles is still out there. Though, it must be said, I don’t think Charles was self-aware when he was alive. 

Thomas: James, really, you must be nicer to Charles. He helped you break me out. 

Flint: No, no, he’s certainly self-aware now - I think it just took being hung for him to get there. 

[Jack appears to be choking on air.]

Jack: The ghost of Charles Vane helped you burn down the plantation in 1716?

Flint: Yes. I think he’s still haunting the Walrus, so if you find the wreck, you’ll find him. He’s probably mellowed with 300 years underwater, so he won’t try to kill you on sight. 

Thomas: I think there’s a few presidents on Capitol Hill. 

John: And I know there’s ghosts in the theatres on Broadway. And a couple at the Stonewall. 

[Max looks gleeful.]

Flint: You’ll have a harder time convincing them to manifest. We’re more - amenable - that most. Manifesting takes focus and energy, and need a locus point. 

Max: A locus point?

Thomas: Some strong feeling to help anchor you. James and I can use our experiences here - there’s a great deal of suffering still in the earth here, and that helps us. John’s been using the joy that comes from the people who stay here. It’s easier for him with Madi around, of course. 

Flint: Some of those other ghosts won’t have a locus, so if you want them to manifest you’ll need to help them. 

Max: Offer them something to help them feel a strong emotion?

Thomas, pleased: Precisely! 

[Jack appears to have overcome his fear by means of academic interest.]

Jack: Could you help us? Be a resource?

[Flint and Thomas look at each other.]

Flint: We could consult if you had the right materials. 

Max: Like what?

Thomas: There’s a hand mirror in the room that used to be John’s - if you took it with you, we could manifest in the mirror, or the space you’re in, depending. 

[Max looks utterly thrilled.]

Jack: Nerds.

[We cut to black.]

Caption: The next day

[We’re back in the car. Max is twisted around to face Anne in the back. She’s clutching a hand mirror in both hands.] 

Max: So we’re leaving the plantation now and I can say with certainty, fuck the format, that ghosts are real, suck it Jack, and we’re going to find fucking more. 

Jack, tiredly: We are. 

Thomas, from within the mirror: Where’s your adventuring spirit, Mister Rackham?

[They stop at a red light, and Jack lets his forehead fall onto the steering wheel.]


End file.
